


they call him one mall steel

by scornandivory



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: M/M, but like a paul blart mall cop au that gets weirdly dark because by god juno's going to angst, kind of, like the soup packet that comes with stovetop ramen if you water it down too much, ok so full disclosure i said this was a paul blart au and really its just paul bart flavored, paul blart mall cop au, that thing everyone was absolutely clamoring for, what is............pacing, what's a king to a god what's a god to a regional cinnabon manager, you know
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-04
Updated: 2019-02-04
Packaged: 2019-10-20 13:26:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 16,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17623217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scornandivory/pseuds/scornandivory
Summary: The answer to the eternal question: okay, but what if there was a Paul Blart Mall Cop AU for the Juniverse. Featuring a frankly irresponsible condensation of the timeline, Juno Steel as a cranky mall cop, and the knowledge that nothing good ever happens in the food court bathrooms. Oh, and Peter, who is far too comfortable in Claire's to be up to any good.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> don't look at me i don't know what this either
> 
> somehow this mess got some fan-fucking-tastic art by by [hei](http://tvheit.tumblr.com) who was just completely amazing! please go check them out, they're an intergalactic treasure and everything they do is *chefs kiss*
> 
> i couldn't decide whether or not to end this in the goofy manner of blaul part call mop or the the more depressing way 2 mask 2 murderous ended so basically the second chapter is an alternative ending.
> 
> i would say enjoy but.... god at what cost

Hyperion Property Group, L.P. Some people thought they built the best malls in America. Everyone else worked there.

“No one in history has ever compared companies based on who build better malls that didn't work for those companies, Steel,” Alessandra Strong said with that tone of voice that heavily implied she was showing Juno more patience than he deserved by continuing to listen to him and he could thank her by shutting up at any time. She was still new to the nefarious machinations of the mall. Sure, she had lived in actual war zones without indoor heating or plumbing for years, but had she pulled a furious twenty-something with remarkably sharp elbows out of the food court men’s restroom as he tried to write the first five pages of the Communist Manifesto on the back of a stall door in metallic Sharpie?

Juno Steel, mall cop, sighed. “Yeah, but look at all these happy idiots. Do you know what all’s in that hotdog? Neither do I. Neither does that moron in the technicolor Hawaiian shirt, but he’s shoving it down his gullet like it’s his last meal. That’s what I mean. They only care about the things they interact with because knowing how the sausage gets made and what the workers get paid ruins the taste of shitty mystery meat in a way that no amount of mustard’s gonna cover.”

“Okay, a couple things. One: don’t talk about Mick like that, his shirt’s fine. Two: you ate three of those on your lunch break.”

“Yeah, but I’m actively trying to get lethal levels of food poisoning. If I survive it I have a chance to call off work and have a whole twenty four hours without getting harassed about people trying to have sex in the bathrooms or snorting Adderall off the toilet paper dispensers—” because apparently mall bathrooms were where civilization went to spur on it’s bitter, inglorious end—“and if I don’t survive it I’ll get the irony points for dying of mindless consumption in a mall. Also, I’ll be dead.”

“Just try not to puke in front of the consultant,” Alessandra told him, eyeing a boy who’s hair said _my barber came in hungover_ and general aura said _I call myself an artist because I think complaining about my mom not paying for me to go backpacking in Europe counts as slam poetry if I add in enough random pauses_ attempting some Tier III flirting with a girl who was somehow both lightyears out of his league and apparently interested. Would that the rampant hormones and undiscerning naivety of straight seventeen-year-olds could last. “How’s your car?”

“Don’t do it, he’s just going to use you as a weird muse and then write sad free verse poetry about how everyone he loves walks away from him when you dump him because you’ve realized anime pins aren’t a substitute for a personality,” Juno said as though the girl could hear him. “ And my car’s still fucked. Wait, what consultant?”

“And then try to perform that shitty, sad free verse poetry over a B.I.G. verse,” agreed Alessandra. “And the consultant that Pereyra’s bringing in? You know, because of the shitfit the Kanagawas threw about the break-in? Sorry about your car, though.”

“Not important right now. We’re bringing in a consultant because of one break-in where nothing got taken? Jesus, Croesus”

Juno and Alessandra winced in tandem as the boy reached into his messenger bag and pulled out a book that Juno recognized from the window of their Waldenbooks as _12 Rules for Life_. The girl visibly did a double take and leaned back slightly.

“Run. Run now, and run far,” Alessandra willed the girl. “And it’s one break in where nothing _allegedly_ got taken. The Kanagawas aren’t super fond of us or the police right now, so they’re waiting for their consultant’s decision. It’s not like Pereyra can just ignore them. If the Kanagawas took their stores out of the mall we’d lose a ton of foot traffic. It’s hard for a mom-and-pop conglomerate to compete with Amazon these days, you know?”

Juno snorted. “Won’t someone think of the venture capitalists?”

“I think they’re just regular capitalists, actually,” Alessandra said thoughtfully. “And I’m surprised you hadn’t heard about the consultant. Rita’s excited about it—I can see you thinking it and no, I don’t know how or why Rita knows anything about the consultant and I’m not going to ask—and. Ah. They hired him through Dark Matters.”

Which Juno might have had a heads up on if he had charged his phone sometime in the last three days. But then, considering how unstable his relationship with Sasha was at any given moment, maybe not.

Not that Juno had been even remotely expecting Dark Matters to send someone out. He wasn’t totally sure what they did, but Sasha had repeatedly informed him that their workings were both sinister and efficient, which didn’t really sound like the type of people who showed up to look into break-ins at the local mall. But then again, maybe that changed when the owners of the store predicted most of what got popular on the big screen, then the small screen, then the smaller screen, and rode their investments like a wave into the 1% club. If anyone could bend the great and terrible ear of Sasha Wire, it was Croesus Kanagawa.

“Ugh. So basically we’re going to have a guest speaker come in and tell us how to do our jobs instead of the usual rendition of Pereyra popping in to condescend to us about the number of Mall Teens stealing clearance nail polish from Claire’s.”

“Hey, maybe it’ll be fun and original,” Alessandra suggested in a tone too positive to be anything other than sarcasm.

“Yeah, maybe they have a PowerPoint with some of those fun slide transitions,” Juno tossed back.

Alessandra gave a short, snorting burst of laughter and shook her head. “Maybe we can do some fun roleplay scenarios where, like, someone’s trying to steal supplement powder from the herbal place and someone else has to pretend enough to care enough about male performance supplements that are mostly soy and alfalfa to stop it.”

“Or what to do when someone slashes their ex’s tire in the Cheesecake Factory curbside delivery parking spaces.”

“Or when store managers won’t stop calling you because there’s three people singing “Call Me Maybe” in the dressing rooms and they want them to leave.”

“Or when you have to figure out what the protocol is because one of the temps at Claire’s tries to give himself a Prince Albert with their piercing gun and the manager tried to cover it up, except then the temp ended up with dick tetanus because they weren’t sterilizing their equipment right and we had to hand it over to Hyperion City Public Health.”

Alessandra stared. “That never happened.”

“Three months before you started working here.” Juno raised an eyebrow at her. “I’m surprised Rita never filled you in.”

“She must have been too busy filling me in on which twin is pregnant and cryogenically frozen and which one fell into a volcano and who’s secretly their own father in… whatever it is she’s watching these days.”

“Yeah, she doesn’t always prioritize so well. So what are the odds Pereyra would notice if I didn't show? I mean, it’s not like they asked for me by name, right?”

***

It turned out that Pereyra had, in fact, asked for him by name. Well, sort of. They had referred to him as “the short bitchy one (dayshift)” but he’d been at Old Town Mall long enough to read between the lines.

The consultant was supposed to arrive at half past noon. All attending security officers were asked to be in the office five to ten minutes early to show a good face. So, of course, at 12:28, Juno was still making his way over.

He turned the corner to see Rita leaning on the wall next to the movie theater, looking at one of the posters. She probably thought she was being casual, but the bouncing up and down was a dead giveaway, as was taking her eyes off the poster every ten seconds to peer through the dwindling crowds. He could tell the exact moment she saw him because she went perfectly still the way cats do before they pounce and her hair seemed to get an extra inch of floof before she, unconvincingly, tried to casually lean on the wall and wait for him to come over.

“Well, well, well, Mr. Steel,” she said in what had to be the most conspicuous tone of voice she was capable of. “Fancy meeting you here.”

“That’s the security office, Rita. And I’m contractually obligated to tell you nothing about what happens in the meeting.” Which may or may not have been true, but the last thing he needed was for her to “try to put the Rita on” someone else.

Rita pouted. “Aww, but Mr. Steel, I can help! I know where everything is and I’m in a great position to do some recon if I do say so myself.”

“There are maps at every entrance, and you work at a kiosk that sells stuffed animals, knockoff Yu-Gi-Oh trading cards, off-brand candy bars.”

“Yeah, and that’s why no one’s ever going to suspect a thing! Plus, my kiosk?” She crouched slightly and held her arms straight in front of her, making finger guns. “To the north: food court! To the southwest: Cheesecake Factory entrance! To the east: all the shops where the kids with the funny haircuts go! To the west: bathrooms!” She did a little hop-turn every time she mentioned a new direction, as though to truly highlight the masterwork of tactical positioning that was her kiosk. “Face it, boss, you ain’t gonna do better than Fort Rita.”

“I have to go to a meeting now, Rita,” Juno said, neatly sidestepping her and power walking down the side hallways.

“But boooooss!” Rita wailed after him.

“Goodbye, Rita,” Juno called back, finally reaching the security office.

Alessandra had beat him there, which was hardly a surprise because so had everyone else. She was leaning back against a wall, face lit by an electric glow as she checked her text messages. She looked up and tapped a button on the side of her phone before sliding it into her breast pocket. “Didn’t manage fatal levels of food poisoning yet, I see.”

“Not yet. Did Pereyra actually send us anything on this schmuck or are we being kept in suspense?” Juno asked.

“Juno, I am begging you. You have a phone from this century now. Learn how to use it. And yeah, they sent an email. Don’t disappoint me, yadda yadda, you’re all replaceable, yadda yadda. The consultant’s some dude named Rex Glass. Apparently, he comes very highly recommended.”

“’Rex Glass?’ That can’t be right. That’s not a person, that’s a cartoon villain,” Juno said.

“That’s what it says in the email.” Alessandra produced her phone and pulled up the memo. Sure enough.

“Are they sending us a stripper?” Was Vicky launching an assault on malls, now?

“Maybe just an avant-garde cabana boy,” Alessandra replied. “Whose parents did the most acid.”

“Whatever he is, if Dark Matters recommended him, he’s going to be a hardass.”

Which was when the knock sounded at the door.

There was a moment as six trained security officers froze and looked at each other in a silent, _who’s getting the door?_ Luckily, the consultant solved their problem for them by immediately opening the door and stepping inside, closing it politely behind himself.

Juno and Alessandra exchanged a brief, wild look. _Oh my God,_ they said in tandem through the ancient medium of panicked eye contact. _Dark Matters sent us an avant-garde cabana boy._

The man—Rex Glass—was, in a word, manicured. He had the sort of cultivated feel you only get with debutantes and equestrians. He was tall and rail-thin with onyx-chip eyes and dark, slicked-back hair and these ridiculous glasses that belonged in 80’s pop art more than on the face of a serious consultant and was carrying a clipboard with a few sheets of paper, a pen, and a small bottle of white-out balanced on top of it. He was one of those people who could pull off the weird nouveau-Victorian Gothic trend where you just did your eyebrows and slapped on some dark lipstick and look amazing and Juno sort of really resented him for it. Those sharp, dark eyes slid across the assembled staff like oil, a polite smile never leaving the man’s face.

“Hello,” he said in an accent Juno couldn’t quite place, “I am Rex Glass, and I am a consultant recommended by Dark Matters to look into a recent break-in. I was told I would be shown around the property before looking at Mr. Kanagawa’s space. I do hope you were informed I was coming since I’ll be needing to borrow one of you to show me around. I don’t suppose anyone would like to volunteer?”

The headless chicken that was Oldtown Mall security floundered until Glass’s eyes settled on Juno, smile widening ever so slightly, having clearly selected his chosen ambassador. Juno’s desire to find a window to jump out increased exponentially.

Rex Glass stepped closer until he was perhaps an arm’s length away from Juno, then leaned in to peer at his name badge.

He smelled amazing, and his eyeliner had glitter in it. Juno needed to leave immediately.

“Well, hello, Mr. J. Steel. I need a tour guide; would you be so kind as to oblige me?”

“…fine,” Juno said. “Let me grab a radio with a better charge first.”

“Of course,” Glass said graciously.

Juno fled to the radio racks and took his sweet time inspecting charge levels, all the while convincing himself that quitting on the spot because he thought someone was hot was a horrible plan in the long term.

Behind him, Alessandra broke the awkward tension by saying, “I hope you have a pleasant experience with our mall. How have you liked it so far?” like the war hero she was.

“It’s been a delight. Pereyra has an eye for modern architecture. I hear the most charming little rumors about this place through the grapevine, you know,” Rex said at Alessandra but to the room as a whole. “I think my favorite is that there’s wild rabbits running amok in the vents.”

“There are no rabbits in the ventilation system,” the room of security personnel, who certainly had no knowledge of ventilation bunnies or kept little baggies of carrots or celery on their person or had a private group chat for rabbit spotting, said as one. Rex Glass’s smile froze, and as he turned back to the consultant, Juno thought he could see the barest hint of panic in the man’s eyes.

“I’ve got it,” Juno said, holding up his fresh radio. “Let’s go.”

***

“So am I just taking you around the whole mall?” Juno asked. “Is there anything specific you’re looking for? Emergency exits? Most heavily populated areas?”

“Hm. Well, I definitely want to see both of those in person, if you don’t mind, but I can go over the blueprints for most of that. No, what I want to do right now is get a _feel_ for the mall. Schematics mean nothing to me without context, Mr. Steel.”

“That sounds doable,” Juno said diplomatically because saying _you are an insane person and this is a waste of time_ would probably get him fired. “Let me know if you think of anything. And you can call me Juno.”

“Well, then, Juno,” Rex Glass said with an elegant sweep of his arm. “I am in your care. Show me the sights.”

Juno stared for a moment, then shrugged and walked back out of the side corridor and into the main body of the mall.

“This is the southwest exit, also known as the Cheesecake Factory exit,” he said with a nod in the direction of the wall of sliding glass doors, carefully ignoring Rita, who had stopped mid-sale to gawk at Glass. “It’s also the main entrance, so there’s a lot of foot traffic. The mall itself has sort of a wonky triangle shape, so if you go left here it’ll take you to the Belk exit and if you go right you’ll end up by what is, until the store finishes going out of business, our Sears exit. Food court’s approximately in the middle and if you go straight through you’ll see the escalator up to the movies, which have their own exit onto the second floor of the parking garage. Any preferences where we start?”

“Oh, definitely the food court. That’s where the mall is at its most mall-like, don’t you agree?”

“...sure. Any special requests?”

Rex Glass’s grin would have looked at home on a fox. “Oh, no, I put myself in your capable hands. And,” his eyes dipped just below Juno’s waist before snapping back up to his face so quickly Juno might have thought he’d imagined it except for the way Glass’s smile got just a fraction more self-satisfied, “I think I’ll enjoy following you around.”

Juno knew how to handle a lot of things. Pretty people flirting with him without the intervention of alcohol wasn’t one of them, and he felt his heart skip a beat. “This way,” he said, turning towards the food court and refusing to imagine that he could feel Glass’s gaze on him as he walked away.

***

The food court looked, to the best of Juno’s knowledge, like nearly every food court in existence. That is, there were food vendors, there were tables, and at some of those tables were people. It was a little more crowded than usual, just hitting the peak of the lunch rush, but nothing he hadn’t seen before.

“Well, this is it,” he told Glass. “Any questions?”

“Shouldn’t you be paying attention to those volatile youths, Mr. Officer of the Peace?” Rex said conspiratorially, tilting his head at two tables of sixteen-to-twenty-year-olds angrily glaring at each other as they made their way through their respective lunches.

“Oh, that?” Juno peered around him to get a better look. “That’s just Earring Stalingrad. They know not to get into anything serious on mall property during business hours.”

Rex blinked. “That’s just what now?”

Juno sighed. “Earring Stalingrad. Okay so that table, the one where everyone has Chipotle,” he said, pointing, “all work for francesca’s. They hate the Claire’s workers because they think Claire’s makes chain jewelry stores aimed at minors look bad. And _that_ table is all Claire’s employees, who hate francesca’s people because they think francesca’s is just bougie Claire’s and that having their name in all lowercase makes them sound like an Instagram poet with a cat named after a Russian philosopher they’ve never read. Anyways the rivalry has gotten worse because Andre, who’s the junior manager at francesca’s, and Paul, who does ear piercings at Claire’s, hooked up and then accused each other of being honeypots for their respective chains.”

Rex blinked again, more slowly this time. Juno could almost feel bad for him, were he the kind of lady who did things like empathize with the pain of others. “That’s… intense,” the consultant said carefully.

“It’s a complicated pain in the ass,” Juno said, heading forward towards the movies. “It’s been going on forever, and I only know anything about it because one of the kiosk workers I talk to is friends with Paul so she’d tell him whatever she knew about the francesca’s people, except then the shift lead at francesca’s bribed her with a DVD copy of _She’s the Man_ and two Petro’s coupons to spy on Claire’s as a double agent. But she told Paul about it so Claire’s got her to be a triple agent by promising to have all the staff refer to her as ‘The Rita.’ Then _my_ boss started asking her about the rivalry after Asher—the one in the blue polo at the francesca’s table—called Demi—unicorn earring at the Claire’s table—a heinous slut in front a Christian youth group, so she was a quadruple agent, but she lies about things that happen at Claire’s to get them off the hook, so they still have her as a quintuple agent. Except she also tells me literally everything that happens, which could possibly make her a sextuple agent except I have no capacity whatsoever to care about any of it.”

“I’m going to be honest with you here, Juno,” Glass said in the same tone another man might whilst divulging state secrets. “I’m not entirely sure how to respond here.”

Juno snorted. “Come on, I’ll show you the Kanagawa’s store and then the Cheesecake Factory exit. It’s got the most foot traffic.”

Glass made a sweeping bow. “Lead the way.”

***

If there was one good thing about Oldtown Mall, it would be that it wasn’t huge. Point B was a pretty easy walk away from point A, which was good because Glass kept smiling at Juno with this charming little quirk of the lips and by the time they reached the section of the mall where the Kanagawa’s store was, Juno was about ready to burst. He’d thought that maybe Glass’s earlier flirtation had been an anomaly, or that he’d just imagined it, but no. They’d gotten about halfway to their destination when Glass had stopped their small talk in its tracks to say “you know, you have absolutely gorgeous eyes. Simply stunning.”

Juno didn’t know what to say to that, other than pulling a Dale Gribble and going with “are you attempting to know me?” which seemed accurate but not like something an actual person would say. He settled on “thanks.”

Glass smiled, like he was genuinely pleased with Juno or something, and smoothly guided them back to casual conversation. But his voice was just a little warmer and he stood just a little closer than he had before and Juno? Juno was just a bisexual disaster.

It was something of a relief when he saw a familiar figure in the crowd, looking at the “Closed Temporarily, See You Soon!” sign on the shuttered windows of Croesus Kanagawa’s store.

“Hey, give me like two minutes,” Juno said and jogged ahead of the consultant without waiting for a response.

Juno took a minute to look at her. He hadn’t talked to her in a while and hadn’t seen her in person in even longer. She looked good, though, better than Juno himself did. Her long, dark hair was pulled into a smooth ponytail and she was wearing a loose-knit sweater and jeans he remembered her buying about seven years ago. She looked stressed, but everyone Juno knew looked stressed these days.

“Boo,” he said after a moment.

Cass jumped, then spun around. “Ah, the very asshole I was just thinking about. How’ve you been, Juno?”

“I’ve been alright. How mad are your parents?”

“Oh, they’re disasters. I think Min’s about to start force-feeding Dad Xanax if he doesn’t calm down.”

“Sounds like a party.”

“Nah, that’s just a Tuesday. So did you just come over to check in on my beloved parents?”

Juno looked around for prying eyes and leaned in.

“Cass,” Juno asked, voice low, “I gotta ask. Was it you?”

Cass leaned in as well. “Juno. I gotta say. No.”

“You got an alibi that’s going to hold up, then? It’s not exactly the world’s biggest secret that you and your dad don’t get along.”

Cassandra tossed her hair over her shoulder. “I’ll have you know we’re doing fine right now, actually.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. He greenlit my show.”

Now, _that_ was surprising. “Really? I thought he was of the opinion that it was a huge drain on resources.”

“He was,” Cass said. “But I proved that my ideas and I have merit. We… made a deal. I convinced him to come on a trip with me and he ended realizing just how worth his while what I have to offer is. I’m not cutting into any of his precious budget, and he’s putting his support behind my ideas with the network. So, yeah. It’s all rose-colored here, dude.”

“How are you paying for this?”

“Oh, you know, sold a couple kidneys.” She grinned at him conspiratorially. “Don’t worry, none of them were mine.”

Juno smiled at her. “I don’t know if ‘I steal kidneys and know where you live’ is something I shouldn’t worry about.”

Cass snorted. “Please. I remember what your kidneys went through back when you were still fun. I’d get like two bucks apiece for ‘em, max.”

Juno recalled a booze-and-occasionally-coke haze that had swept over his late twenties and cropped up sometimes in his early thirties. He didn’t remember it being fun so much as the only waking relief from the unending nightmare of existence, and told Cass so.

“Juno, buddy, I got some news for you,” she replied, deadpan. “That’s all fun is.”

“Alright, Kanagawa. Just don’t get arrested, okay? I was just popping over to say hey, me and the fancy security consultant have to poke around here for a minute.”

“Ooh, that him?” Cass peered around Juno to where Glass was reading a Verizon poster, back turned to them. “Dad made the biggest fuss about hiring him, you shoulda heard it. Kept yelling about how if the cops weren’t doing their job and mall security wasn’t doing its job, he’d just bring in a specialist because if anything happened in this godforsaken city it was because a Kanagawa took initiative. Real inspiring stuff, really.”

“I’ll let him know Croesus thinks so highly of him,” Juno said drily.

“You do that. I’m told it’s something of an honor. I’ll get out of your hair,” Cass said, turning to walk away. “See you around, Junebug.”

“I’ll pay you to stop calling me that,” he called after her, trying to catch Glass’s eye to motion him over.

Cass laughed. “You don’t have anything I want!” she called over her shoulder.

Juno shook his head. “Same as ever,” he muttered as he finally got Glass’s attention.

The consultant dutifully trotted over. “A friend of yours?” he asked, pulling out his phone and opening it to the camera app.

“Old one,” Juno said. “Kinda lost touch with her, though. That’s Cass Kanagawa, by the way.”

Glass stopped what he was doing and peered after her. “You don’t say?”

“I’m surprised she came out here,” Juno said. “She was never thrilled with the merchandising side of all this. I guess it’s kind of a shock for the whole family though.”

“Oh, I imagine so. Family can be strange like that,” Glass agreed.

“Mm.” There was a moment of silence between them, which Juno broke by saying “just let me know if you need any help over there.”

“Oh, I’m done,” Glass said, slipping his phone back into his pocket.

Juno blinked at him. “You’re _done_?”

“Oh, yes. Pereyra doesn’t want me poking around too much while the mall is open. They say they don’t want anything contaminated, but I just think they don’t want to cause a scene. You said we were going to the southwest exit next?”

“Uh, yeah, sure. Follow me,” Juno said, then remembered Glass comment about just how much he’d enjoy following him.

True to form, Glass grinned. “Anywhere, Juno.”

***

“I feel like I should mention for the sake of politeness that I have seen your file,” Glass said as they made their way towards the exit.

“Uh-huh,” Juno replied, spine going cold. “And which file would that be, again.”

“The one that covers your past employment,” Glass said with an apologetic smile. “It’s very impressive, by the way. Impressive enough to beg the question of why you’re working here.” Juno turned to glare at Glass, who held up his hands in a conciliatory gesture and hurriedly added, “not that you’re not doing a lovely job here, but, well. Not everyone has the sort of aptitude you clearly have.”

“That’s a leading question, especially considering I know I’m not a suspect,” Juno bit out.

“Well, I’m not at liberty to say whether or not anyone is--” Glass started.

“I’m not a suspect,” Juno firmly interrupted. “If they thought I did it Pereyra would have fired me so Hyperion didn’t have to cover my health insurance when the Kanagawas kneecapped me. That’s what my _aptitude_ is telling me, Mr. Glass.”

Rex smiled bashfully, just a hint to calculated for Juno to want to trust. “I don’t mean to offend, Juno. I’m just curious about you. There’s just... _something_ about you that I find absolutely intriguing.”

“Really? Because personally, I’m more attracted to people who don’t commit gross invasions of privacy,” Juno snarked.

“It was all very professional, I assure you, Juno,” Rex said. “I was given a file and everything. But I am a bit curious.”

“About?”

“Why you left.”

Juno glared at Glass as best he could, considering they were standing next to each other and in motion.

Rex did a little half-jog to get in front of Juno, then spun around and walked backward. “Just a hint?” he asked with winning smile.

Juno snorted. “How about this one: you’re about to walk into a plant.”

Glass gave a little yelp and course-corrected just in time to not trip over an ornamental palm tree outside the Aeropostale.

 _That’s adorable,_ Juno thought. Then: _fuck._

“Well, thank you very much for the heads up. I feel much safer around a dedicated officer of the peace such as yourself. But I am still curious,” Glass said as he lined his pace up with Juno’s once again.

Juno considered for a moment. On one hand, why the fuck would he tell this flamingo of a consultant anything. On the other, it might get him to stop asking. And on a third mutant hand Juno swore he would get looked at one of these days, Glass fell into that liminal space of “person I like enough to talk to, assuming that I am still capable of liking anything or anyone after years of suppressing my emotions with a carefully curated veneer of irony and self-hatred” and “someone I might never see again, and therefore cannot be held responsible for the emotional vulnerability I show them.”

“There were two reasons. The first one was that I got tired,” Juno said finally, pretending to be very interested in his nail bed so he didn’t have to make eye contact.

“Of?” Rex prompted.

Juno sighed. “All of it. It was just… a lot of fanfare and not a lot of actually helping. And at the end of the day, it was a job where I hated everyone and everyone hated me. So I quit.”

“Well, I’m sorry to hear that. It’s their loss,” Rex replied, voice soft.

“Yeah, not really,” Juno snorted.

There was a moment, and then Rex, he who could not take a hint, piped back up. “What was the second reason?”

“A secret,” Juno replied firmly, picking up his pace so he was walking in front of Rex. It didn’t work, mostly because Rex had legs like a gazelle and matched his stride easily.

“Whatever the reason is, I suppose I’m lucky to have such a talented companion while I’m here,” Rex breezed on like Juno wasn’t actively trying to run away from the conversation. “How much have they told you about the break-in?”

“Just that there was one, nothing was taken, and the Kanagawas want the property checked out because whoever it is might come back.”

“Did they tell you that the Kanagawas recommended you for the case?”

Juno’s steps stuttered. He powered through, but there was no way Glass hadn’t noticed. “Did they.”

“Oh, yes, Juno. You come very highly recommended.” Glass smiled that fox’s smile at him again. “You seem to have a few friends in high places.”

Juno couldn’t not laugh at that. “They aren’t friends. Back when I was still a detective, I pulled most of Cecil out of a sticky situation. His parents weren’t thrilled that I didn’t manage to save his arm as well, and he hasn’t stopped trying to get me on one of his stupid shows where you have to sign three million waivers that all basically say you acknowledge that if you try to sue him for, say, attempting to disembowel you. The only sane one of them is Cassandra, and that’s why she’s trying so damn hard to get out.”

“You lead quite an interesting life, don’t you, Juno?” Glass said. Juno still wasn’t up to looking at him, but it didn’t matter. He could hear the smirk.

“Me? Nah. I’m the most boring lady you’ll ever meet. Anyways, we’re almost there. You may want to brace yourself.”

“Why? Does Cheesecake Factory have more charming inter-store rivalries?” Rex asked, straightening his collar.

“No, but we’re almost certainly going to run into the Jesus Moms. I think they have book club today.”

Glass raised one immaculate eyebrow. “And here I was hoping for something with a little more pizazz.”

“Unfortunately, we are fresh out of pizazz. Just remember to move fast enough that they can’t form a prayer circle around you and we’re set.”

The consultant chuckled in the carefree way of someone who had never had to face a horde of menopausal Baptists head-on. “I think I’ll be fine, Juno. But thank you for the warning.”

***

“...and yeah. Like all the other doors, this one’s got a mag lock and a sensor. When both sides of the sensor—the one in the door and the one in the frame—connect, the lock engages and doesn’t disengage until someone swipes their security badge. It isn’t foolproof, which is why the Kanagawas are demanding we redo the doors, but it keeps out a lot of the problems. You okay?”

Rex Glass had been standing stiffly behind Juno, who was showing him the emergency exit in the Cheesecake Factory kitchen. He was looking paler than he had before they walked into the restaurant, which was impressive since he had started out only slightly darker than talcum powder.

“I am… okay. Yes.” Glass answered slowly, sliding one hand down the buttons on his shirt in what appeared to be a steadying gesture and then shoving both hands in his pockets.

“I did warn you about them,” Juno said unsympathetically.

“Yes, but...” Glass shuddered. “Why did they all have diaper bags?”

“That would be the ‘mom’ part of ‘Jesus Moms.’”

“None of them had children with them though,” Glass said, the faintest gleam of religious bookclub-based insanity creeping into his eyes.

“Oh, they never do. Bringing their kids with them would defeat the point of Mommies and Mimosas. Also, Jesus Mom Chantelle's youngest is in college and none of the Karens have any children under twelve. Just in case you wanted more reasons to fixate on the diaper bags. And—” Juno leaned over to look at Glass’s back pocket and absolutely nothing else “—it looks like one of them slipped you a book of Proverbs.”

Glass jolted, then snatched the booklet out of his pocket and stared at it like it was a venomous snake. Juno could practically see his hair going white.

“They’re sneaky like that. Anyways, the only doors with a mag lock are exterior doors, security offices, the rooms where the safes are kept, stuff like that. Most of the storefronts just have the shutters, a card swipe, and a key.” Glass didn’t seem to be listening. Weak. The Mall Teens would eat him alive.

***

Juno ended up taking Glass to Cinnabon partially as an apology and partially because it was time for his break. Which was how he found out that Mick worked at Cinnabon now.

“Yup,” Mick said with the grizzled air of a spaghetti Western hero. “It’s a hard day’s work, but it’s honest money.” He slapped a hand down on the register, which let out a worrying beep.

“Mick, you were working at the hermit crab kiosk this morning,” Juno said in exasperation.

“Ee ot eired or utt’ng rabs in is air,” Alessandra said around a mouthful of bagel. She swallowed. “I mean, he got fired for putting crabs in his hair.”

“ _Why?_ ”

Mick locked eyes with Juno, his gaze dignified. “As the great poet Owen Wilson once said, _dolce and gabbana_ _est pro patria mori,_ my friend _,_ ” he said solemnly.

Juno stared in horrified amazement. “I don’t know if I’m more surprised that you were able to mess it up that badly or that you knew it enough to mess it up in the first place.”

“He wanted them to race to the top of his head,” Alessandra said before the madness spiraled any further, “but instead Shell Diablo pinched his ear and he said a bad word in front of a girl scout.”

“Yeah, that’d do it,” Juno sighed, pulling out his wallet. “A classic for me and whatever he wants.”

“A four-piece Bites set for me, and I insist on paying,” Glass said. He winked at Juno. “We’ll call it a business expense. Can I get you anything, Miss Strong? It’s lovely to see you again, by the way.”

“You too, and I’m good but thank you,” Alessandra said politely, holding up her bagel. “How’s it going?”

“We’re just about done, actually,” Glass said. Juno, who had not realized they were almost done, raised an eyebrow. “Juno’s been incredibly helpful. You have the most… unique patrons here, did you know?”

“Jesus Moms, Satanists, or Cheer Team?” Alessandra asked.

“Jesus Mom,” Juno replied. Alessandra made a sympathetic noise.

“...there’s more?” Glass asked hesitantly.

“Oh yeah. The Satanists are fine, honestly, they just want to dance to their Skrillexes next to the Spencer’s and scare conservatives. The cheer team is an unholy terror, but they usually aren’t here on weekdays so you’re safe” Alessandra told him, taking another bite.

“See? You’re already over the worst of it,” Juno said. “So, is this, to, like, get you in the right mindset, or…?” he gestured to Alessandra’s lunch.

“You’re hilarious,” she answered him, deadpan.

Glass looking between the two of them, confused. “Something I’m missing?”

“My fiancée is Jewish, I’m converting so we can get married by a rabbi,” Alessandra explained. “Juno went to a synagogue growing up and likes to mock me. And, Juno, to answer your question, if you’re a convert there’s a monthly bagel minimum you have to meet or the Chabad secret police breaks into your apartment to slather you down in bacon grease and staple the foreskin back on.”

Glass choked.

“Alright, that’s two churros and a Nutella MiniBon for you and your friend, Jay,” Mick said with a wink.

“Not even kind of close, but thanks,” Juno said, tossing over his card before Glass recovered enough to pay. “You want the MiniBon?”

“Ah, yes, that sounds good,” Glass said, shaking his head. “Shall we go sit down?” He gestured grandly to the most empty tables.

“Sounds good. Check your seat for gum.” Juno turned and nodded goodbye to Alessandra and Mick. Sure enough, there was a bright yellow bandaid on the shell of Mick’s left ear. Somethings just never changed.

“Juno,” Glass said as they sat down, “this is terribly thoughtless of me, but I realize I never actually checked in with you to see how much you knew of the _incident_ , shall we say.”

“About as much as everyone else seems to,” Juno said. “The Kanagawas have a store for, like, electronics and merchandise from their shows, and last night someone actually managed to break in for the first time and trashed the place but didn’t actually steal anything. Made it as far back as the safe room and everything, which means they had a security badge or an EDM.”

“Do you perhaps mean an EMP, Juno?” Glass asked, smiling.

Juno shoved half a churro in his mouth. “Sure, let’s go with that.”

Glass chuckled and picked at his own pastry. They made an odd pair, Juno supposed. Rex Glass was immaculate, the kind of person who could make eating sticky mall food graceful. Juno, on the other hand, looked like he lived in the dumpster behind a Denny’s on his best days and was now covered in Churro dust.

Juno forced himself to snap out of it. It wasn’t like this was a date, it was just a snack break with a beautiful man who acted like he actually enjoyed Juno’s company.

It was entirely possible that Juno was categorically fucked.

“Anyways, they managed to trip the silent alarm, which should have automatically sealed all the magnetic locks until Pereyra or someone else authorized turned the alarm off. Problem is, the alarm was still going when the police showed up but nobody was in the store. So Pereyra had them check the safe and then close the backroom door and clear out until a specialist—that’s you, by the way—could come in. Which, as much as it pains me to say it, was a smart decision. Take it from someone who knows, HCPD are idiots. But as best they could tell, the safe hadn’t been touched, there was still money in the register, and even though there was a significant amount of stuff that got smashed, it didn’t seem like anything was taken.”

“So you think this was some sort of attempt to anger the Kanagawas, then,” Glass said eyes sparkling.

Juno inhaled more churro, shrugging. “Who can say.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but the Kanagawas are fairly foundational to Hyperion, are they not?” Glass asked.

“That’s the understatement of the millennium,” Juno said with a snort. “The Kanagawas and their network put Hyperion on the map. They own or have connections with every major company here, including the one that owns the malls. That’s why their stores are nicer than everyone else’s. Actually,” Juno continued, swallowing, ”the Claire’s next door to the Kanagawa’s storefront hasn’t had a manager for about a year, right? The employees are ready to riot but I’m thinking it’s not even kind of on Pereyra’s list of shit to get done. Anyways, the assistant manager is kind of taking over, but she isn’t authorized to be able to get into the safe room because she’s not technically the manager and Pereyra’s paranoid, but since Croesus owns a disgusting amount of Hyperion, malls included, he has access and is technically on the list of people they can call to get the door opened. They've all decided they’d rather quit or die first, obviously, but it’s still kind of funny. Croesus Kanagawa, richest man in Hyperion, mob connections we pretend we don’t know about out the ass, and one of the people running a Claire’s.”

Glass chuckled. “It’s quite a picture. I’ll admit, your little mall has taken me quite by surprise, Juno.”

“The Jesus Moms will do that to you,” he said, polishing off his churro.

“Yes, quite. I apologize for ignoring your warning. Maybe we should just have them sit at the entrances to prevent crime,” Glass said with a smile.

“Not the worst idea,” Juno said around a laugh. “I mean, sure you could take ‘em in a fight, but God, at what cost?”

“I image the psychological terror they represent is worse than anything you or I could ever do to them, Juno,” Glass answered, calm facade coming apart at the seams as a wide grin broke across his face.

“Speak for yourself, Glass, I’ve seen some shit in my time,” Juno said and had the somewhat surprising realization that he was actually, maybe, happy. Glass was fun to talk to and easy on the eyes and, well, Juno hadn’t really talked to anyone he didn’t work within an amount of time he didn’t like to think about and Rex Glass? Rex Glass kind of made him feel like he had back in middle school when he still had sweaty palms and emotions.

Glass smiled at him, propping his chin up on his hands. “So, Juno, what are you doing tonight?”

Juno choked on his own saliva. “What?”

“Oh, I don’t mean to be inappropriate,” Glass hurried to say, eyes wide. “I just need to come back when there’s no foot traffic to look into the actual store and I can’t do that without someone in your department with me. I can ask someone on the night shift, but since they’re more here to stand guard on the outside if my understanding of them is correct, and, well. I’ve enjoyed our time together and I’d like to see you again.” Glass smile ramped up a notch, going from sunny to blinding. “I realize it’s a terrible inconvenience, but I’m more than willing to buy you a drink afterward.”

“...I can be free tonight,” Juno said cautiously. “Just let me check in with my boss.”

“Oh, I already spoke with Pereyra,” Glass said brightly. “They said to clock out early so you didn’t go overtime.”

“Of course they did,” Juno grumbled.

“Don’t worry, Officer.” Glass had a worrying twinkle in his eye. “I plan to make it worth your while.”

Juno swallowed. _Time to see if my car’s magically fixed its power steering, I guess._

***

In the end, Rita insisted on dropping him off. It was nice of her, even if her ulterior motives were incredibly transparent.

“So...” she started in the voice of a self-nominated “cool mom” about to drop The Talk on her oldest child on the way to soccer practice. “That consultant seems pretty nice. If you know what I mean.”

“Yup,” Juno said, wishing he had just sucked it up and walked.

“Seems like the type of fella it would be nice to see a lil more of, if you know what I mean,” she went on.

Juno checked the door handle to see if leaping into moving traffic was an option. Rita had, unfortunately, engaged the child locks. “Yes, I know what all those words mean.”

“Seems like the kinda man who might like to drop by the mall a lil more often, if you know what I mean.”

Juno pinched the bridge of his nose. “Rita...”

“Boss,” Rita said, tone suddenly serious, “he wants to besmirch your chastity.”

“Rita,” Juno said, equally serious, “if you say anything like that ever again I will quit on the spot and you will never see me again.”

“But Mistah Steeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeel,” Rita whined. “I’m just thinkin' here—and I asked Franny and she agrees with me and Franny knows what’s what with romance, lemme tell you, her great-great-great-step-aunt-in-law was a real fancy matchmaker and she’s inherited the gift like nobody’s business—anyways we were talking and Franny was like ‘how’s that Mistah Steel doin’, you haven’t mentioned him in a blue moon’ and I said you were same as usual, by which I meant you were all sad and lonely and ‘arrgh Rita don’t touch that I’m a cop’ and _then_ I was like WAIT! Franny! There’s this handsome consultant that showed up around lunchtime and was getting all doe-eyed at Mistah Steel and long story short—”

“—too late—”

“—we think it’d be good for you if you, yanno, asked him for coffee or whatevah and then entered a civil partnership with him. Oh, and Franny thinks the two a’ you should get a corgi.”

“So first of all, I’m going to ignore the fact that you apparently go around telling people I’m sad and lonely,” Juno said. “And second of all, why would you ask Franny anything about me, we’ve never met.”

“Sure you’ve met Franny, boss, she’s the other gal working at Fort Rita with me.”

Juno slowly turned to look at Rita. ”Rita, I have literally never seen anyone but you work there.”

Rita laughed. “Wow, guess you ain’t as observant as you like to think, huh? Or maybe she’s always just taking a bathroom break when you walk by. I swear, that girl takes so many breaks, I’m getting a little concerned. Like, what if she’s got—”

Juno headed her off by punching the power button on the car’s radio.

Rita immediately dropped her previous train of thought to squeal, “ooh! I loved this song when I was younger! Mistah Steel, you remember this?” She reached over and turned the volume up to a level just below “permanently damaging.”

“Vaguely? Sounds like it played at a couple college parties I went to,” Juno said, raising his voice to be heard over the music.

Rita, whose voice just naturally decimated anything in its path, had no such issues. “I didn’t think you did the whole college rigmarole.”

“I didn’t, I just snuck into the parties.”

“Oh, I did that a coupla times!” Rita answered before diving into the song. “HE WANTED HER, SHE’D NEVER TELL, BUT SECRETLY SHE WANTED HIM AS WELL.”

“Oh Jesus.”

“BUT ALL OF HER FRIENDS STUCK UP THEIR NOSE.”

“How far away were we again?”

“AND THEY HAD A PROBLEM WITH HIS BAGGY HOES,” Rita shout-sang over the radio.

Juno had just enough time to ask, “wait, what do you think that lyric is?” before the chorus kicked in.

“HE WAS A SKATER BOY, SHE SAID USE YOUR TURN SIGNAL, ASSHOLE, HE WASN’T GOOD ENOUGH FOR HER!”

Juno settled back into the seat and resigned himself to another five to ten minutes of Rita’s enthusiasms, depending on how many traffic laws she chose to violate.

The answer, as it turned out, was all of them. They were at the mall in three minutes, Juno still white-knuckling the armrest.

“Have fuuuun,” Rita called out the window as she pulled away. “Call me when you want a ride back, me and Franny are gonna be watching beekeeping documentaries for a couple hours.”

Juno, who had yet to charge his phone and also had no desire to get back in Rita’s card just yet, shook his head and went to find Glass.

***

Glass, it turned out, was by the entrance of the mall, chatting amiably with one of the night guards, and immediately perked up when he saw Juno walking over. Juno struggled not to feel any butterflies about that. “Here at last, Juno! Thank you for your time, you’ve been incredibly helpful,” he said, the latter half directed at the guard who nodded and wandered off, presumably to walk the perimeter. Or whatever it was security officers who weren’t Juno did.

“What are we doing here, exactly?” Juno asked.

“Looking at the actual scene of the crime when it won’t cause a spectacle,” Glass answered. “Pereyra had two requests: that this was done discreetly, and that I bring along one of their security team. And so here we are. Don’t worry, this shouldn’t take long and then you can get back home. The alarm can’t be turned on until we’re done and the Kanagawas are, for the obvious reasons, asking that it be armed as soon as possible.” He moved towards the door.

Juno shoved his hand in his pocket for his badge. “Here, I can get it.”

Glass waved him off. “Please, allow me. If I have temporary access I might as well use it. And besides,” he continued, with a smirk, “what kind of gentleman would I be if I made the lady open all his own doors?”

“Oh, you’re a gentleman now?” Juno asked, hoping it was too dark for Glass to see his face flush.

“Oh, Juno, I’m always a gentleman,” Glass laughed, unlocking the door. “You’ll have to let me show you later.”

He ushered Juno through the door and pulled it closed behind them, the lock clicking as it engaged.

“Well, Officer, shall we?” Glass asked, raising a brow. He still looked unfairly pretty in a long black coat and, to Juno's untrained eye, some unfairly well-tailored pants. Juno had panicked, taken a shower, and put on a nicer shirt and was pretty sure he still looked like shit in comparison.

“We shall,” he answered, heart beating just a little bit faster than normal.

“I have a few questions I forgot to ask you earlier,” Glass said as they made their way through the dark mall, lit only by the emergency lights.

“Am I going to regret showing up if you ask them?”

“Hopefully not, but we’ll see,” Glass said cheerfully. “Are there really rabbits in the ventilation system?”

Juno laughed. “Oh yeah. We have a group chat for rabbit spotting. Most of them have names.”

“Well you can’t just not tell me the names, that’s cruel,” Glass said, leaning in so their shoulders just barely brushed each other.

 _I am not going to survive until that drink._ “Off the top of my head, there’s Prince Hopperdink, Anthbunny Hopkins, Pawn Solo, Bunjamin Franklin, and Mr. Popcorn.”

“I sense an odd one out there,” Glass said. He looked absolutely delighted by the confirmation of the existence of vent bunnies.

“He lives by the movie theater,” Juno explained.

“I see. Have you named any of then, Juno?”

Juno shrugged. “Not in a while. Rita gets really into it, though. She has a spreadsheet.”

“Rita being your charming friend at the kiosk? The, what was it, sextuple agent?” Glass asked.

“That’s her,” Juno answered.

“She’s got quite the lung capacity, doesn’t she? She snagged me before I got to the security office. I could barely get a word in edgewise, which is impressive. Normally I’m the talkative one.”

Juno could sympathize. “She’s a trained opera singer. We don’t actually have any evidence that she needs to breathe. She might just be doing it for fun.” His voice, he realized, sounded disgustingly fond. He coughed. “Anyways, yes to the rabbits. What was the other question?”

“Hmm? Oh! Stop me if this is terribly invasive,” Glass said. “I was wondering about your name. ‘Juno.’ Protector goddess. Nasty habit of killing her children though. It’s terribly unique; how did you come by it?”

It was funny how one little question could suck all the air out of the room like that. A cold, unforgiving feeling crept its way up his spine. He felt the way characters who got shoved out of the airlock in Rita’s sci-fi films looked and it took him a minute to find the right words.

“We were born on Christmas Eve,” Juno croaked, then cleared his throat. “One of the nurses made a joke about Christmas babies and so Sarah named us after polytheistic goddesses out of spite.”

Glass clearly heard the change in Juno’s tone, because his voice was suddenly much more gentle. “I didn’t mean to pry, Juno, I—”

“It’s fine. Perfectly normal question.” Juno’s body felt heavy and his brain had sunk into the strange, hazy place it went whenever he remembered that Sarah Steel was something that had actually happened to him. He blinked a few times, trying to clear his head, and realized Glass was looking at him, half worried and half expectant. “What?”

“I asked what you mean about ‘we.’ Do you have a sibling?” Glass asked lightly, like he was trying to walk an iced-over tightrope.

“I had a brother,” Juno said. “Come one, the sooner we get this done the sooner we get out of here.”

Glass clearly knew better than to bring up the subject change. “Right, of course. I have a report I’ll need you to sign off on that basically just says that you were here and I’m not making anything up or fudging any of the details.”

Juno snorted, feeling ever so slightly more human. “Right, paperwork. The most exciting part of this job.”

Glass let out a pleased laugh and just like that it was easier to breathe. “Oh, Juno, you jest, but the things I’ve seen on this job...” He launched into a tale about someone misidentifying a Komodo dragon, which lead to, if Glass were to be believed, lead to a three-car pile-up, two fires, and a man wanted for felony assault getting clotheslined by a librarian. It was a funny story, and Glass was an amazing storyteller. Juno was slowly getting closer and closer to feeling okay again when the softest of sounds broke through his good mood.

Juno slowed, then stopped. His companion kept going, seemingly oblivious.

“—so then Fredricka has to look this man in the face and say ‘no, officer, I—”

“Glass,” Juno said quietly, “do you hear that?”

Glass paused as well and without their footsteps or their voices, the click of the camera’s shutter was a lot louder. They looked at each other, then slowly turned around to see… nothing.

“Juno, I think—” Glass started. Unfortunately, Juno never got to find out what Glass thought because, as per the usual insanity of Juno’s life, a tall, skinny figure jumped around the corner at them with a shriek.

Juno yelled a few words that would have made a sailor blush, grabbed Rex by the hand, and ran. He chanced a look over his shoulder and immediately wished he hadn’t. Between him, Glass, their new friend moving in the dark, he couldn’t get a good look at their pursuer’s, well, anything. But the silver flash of their knife was something Juno was, unfortunately, familiar enough with to identify easily. His breath shortened and he felt a haze of adrenaline fog up his mind, like someone stuffed all his thoughts except for a deep, primal terror with wool. He faced forward and again and forced himself to run just a little faster.

“Juno, what’s happening?” Rex asked, stumbling over his own feet for a moment before following Juno’s lead and dashing away from what was probably not a serial killer (but who was taking _that_ chance?).

“I don’t know!” Juno called back. “This is some night shift bullshit!”

He wasn’t sure which was louder, his footsteps or his heartbeat. Behind them, the figure cackled. The sound seemed to be getting closer and closer, and as much as Juno hoped it was just his imagination he knew better.

 _If I live through this, I need to exercise more_ , Juno told himself. _I won’t, but I need to_.

On instinct, his feet put him on the path to the security office. Rounding the corner next to the Starbucks, he could see Fort Rita and, more importantly, the exit. The exit that they had locked behind them when they came in. _Fuck_.

Juno forced himself, through sheer power of spite, to make a mad dash to Fort Rita, pushing Glass in front of him. He grabbed a box of knock-off Hershey's off the counter and, without letting himself think about it, swung around and hit their stalker with it.

Their pursuer stumbled backward and, foot slipping on one of the scattered candy bars, tumbled to the ground. Juno could feel a sharp pain in his hand. He realized what it was at the same time as Glass sucked in a sharp breath; the knife had cut through the cardboard of the candy box and left a three-inch cut in the center of his palm, blood trickling down his wrist and soaking into his sleeve. With a curse, Juno jerked up the hem of his coat and pressed it against the wound.

His hand was hurting like a motherfucker and he was ever so slightly out of breath, but Juno could finally get a good look at their pursuer. The figure on the ground was wearing a puffy blue cloud of a wig and a round, blue fake nose. Their makeup, starks blues, whites, and blacks, was apparently patterned after a particularly creative mime, and they were wearing knee-high boots and a leather harness. The whole thing was covered in a truly irresponsible amount of glitter.

“Is that a BDSM clown?” Glass asked with the appropriate amount of surprise for a man who was not expecting that to be a question he asked that night.

“No,” Juno said, simultaneously experiencing all five stages of grief. “That’s Cecil Kanagawa.”

“I can be both!” shrieked the figure on the floor. “Juno, I think you broke my hand!”

“The one you can feel or the one you can’t?”

Cecil stopped squirming long enough to dutifully hold up his prosthetic arm where, sure enough, his pinky and ring finger had cracks up the plastic.

Juno sighed. “Tell Croesus to bill it to Dark Matters. Also forgive me for not being sympathetic, seeing as you stabbed me.”

Cecil blinked and looked down at the red seeping through the hem of Juno’s coat where he was using it as a compress.

“Are you bleeding?” he asked, sounding just a bit too interested for Juno’s taste.

“That is a side effect of getting stabbed, Cecil. You should know that, considering your entire life up to this point,” Juno said, tired.

“It was a prop knife!” Cecil protested. In tandem, Juno and Glass looked over to where the very sharp, very dangerous knife had fallen. “Well, it’s a prop as long as no one’s stupid enough to get stabbed by it.”

“Thank you for making this my fault, Cecil,” Juno said. “But yes, I’m bleeding,”

“But are you bleeding actual blood?” Cecil pressed.

“...as opposed to _what_?” Juno asked, then immediately realized he didn’t want the answer.

Cecil screeched with, apparently, glee. “Oh, Junebug that’s going to look so good in the video! Can you hold your hand out so I can see the cut?” He leaned in.

“What video, Mr. Kanagawa?” Glass asked, voice sharpening.

“You know, the video! The one you’re here to shoot!” At Juno and Glass’s blank looks, Cecil deflated slightly. “The… the video with me chasing you around?”

“Cecil, we aren’t here to shoot a video with you. We’re here to look into the break-in at your store.”

“There was a break-in? When?”

“Yesterday,” Glass answered. He wasn’t doing anything particularly threatening, but Juno had the sneaking suspicion that the man holding onto him was more to bite off than Cecil wanted to chew right now and was getting angry. “Why did you think we were here to star in your… whatever this is.”

“ _Clown Carnage_ ,” Cecil supplied helpfully, still sniffling. “I was supposed to scare you and catch it all on film. But now it’s useless!”

“I’m sorry, _Clown Carnage? That’s_ what you were going with? Because that’s more painful than the stab wound,” Juno said incredulously.

“We could have changed it during editing!” Cecil wailed.

“Focus, please. Cecil: why did you think we wanted to be in your video?” Glass asked again.

“Cassandra told me that’s why you were here,” he blubbered. “You were going to walk around and I was going to leap out and scare you and it was going to be classic. A masterpiece.”

Well, if anything was going to shock Juno out of post terrible pun shock, that would be it. “ _Cass_ told you that’s what we were doing? Why?” he demanded.

“Well, _I_ don’t know! I thought she had talked you into coming onto my show to try and get in good with Daddy to get her show greenlit!”

Juno had a sinking suspicion he knew where this was going. “Cass’s show was already greenlit, Cecil.”

“Well, they’d talked about it, sure, but she never got it in writing. Daddy was just so incredibly happy about the mask that he said he'd talk to the stakeholders and, well, she thought she was getting something she wasn’t,” Cecil said, wiping his eyes and smudging the deep blue makeup all down his face.

“What mask?” Glass asked.

“It’s some old mask Daddy found on the trip he took with Cass. He was awfully proud of it. Apparently, they used it for burials. Or fertility rites. But definitely one of those two.”

“How did I not hear about this?” Juno wondered. “Actually, how did the whole damn world not hear about this? Croesus got his hands on something and _didn’t_ brag about it? That’s not like him.”

“Well, it isn’t precisely, you know...” Cecil trailed off and made a truly indecipherable gesture with one hand. Juno waited for him to clarify. “Well, he flew private and didn’t really make much of a fuss about finding it.”

“So you stole it, then,” Glass said.

“They found it in an area that they were heavily discouraged by way of the law from excavating and brought it home, yes.”

“How heavily discouraged?” Juno asked.

“Well, apparently they only wanted government officials and approved personnel there and all recovered items were supposed to go straight to an expert. Allegedly.”

Juno had never worked with Customs. His experiences with smuggling had been almost exclusively high school kids sneaking beer into parties. But he’d always had the sense that some things were big deals, and that maybe, just maybe, a multimillionaire trespassing on protected land to steal an ancient religious artifact was one of those things. It was also perfectly in character for Croesus, who’s only real response to “you can’t have that” was “fuck you, I’ll take two.”

But the mask would be a nightmare to keep around. If word got out you had a piece like that, odds are a lot of folks from both sides of the law would be after it, either to pawn it or preserve it. It’s not the kind of thing you’d keep anywhere with your name on it. But, well. It might just be the kind of thing where, if you had to make a sudden decision without a lot of time, you might just be tempted to stow it somewhere close by. Somewhere that, due to changes in management, only you had access to. Somewhere like...

Juno pinched the bridge of his nose and willed himself to not suplex Cecil into the ornamental fountain. “Cecil. Was your dad using a fucking Claire’s as a front?”

Cecil sniffled. “Well, why would I know? Daddy didn’t want us to pry. And so what if he did?”

The way Juno felt was less the calm before the storm and more the second right before a supernova. “This is important, Cecil. Why would he do that?”

“Well, Cassie was making a big fuss about how it shouldn’t be in a private collection and the Justice Department is always breathing down our necks about _something_ , you of all people know that, and Daddy just thought it might get a little quieter around the house if he had it out of the way.”

“So he _committed a federal crime_?” Juno’s voice was slowly reaching an octave he hadn’t known he was capable of.

“Just a little one!” Cecil whined.

Glass looked around Juno to stare at Cecil. “I… don’t think you quite understand the ‘’federal crime’ part of ‘federal crime.’”

“He doesn’t have to. What, you think he’s ever had the face the consequences for his actions in any meaningful way? He lost an arm and acts like it’s the best thing that ever happened to him.” Juno gestured in the vague area of Cecil. “Go home, Cecil. And delete the fucking footage, neither of signed shit and we both know how disappointed daddy dearest is going to be if you bring that kind of lawsuit on his doorstep.”

Cecil’s lip quivered for a moment, then he fell back onto the floor, sobbing. He held up his arms, limp wrists limp. “Vasily, Vasily take me home.”

One of the cameramen who was wearing a nametag that read “Carl” stepped forward and, which a what-can-you-do-shrug at Juno, hoisted Cecil up into a bridal carry and made his way toward the exit, followed by several incredibly embarrassed looking crew members. Juno sank to the ground and leaned against the kiosk, breathing deeply.

“Juno, I really think we should get you to a hospi—”

“There’s a first aid kit in the drawer under the register.” Juno jerked his thumb back at Fort Rita. “Just toss it to me.”

“I don’t—”

“Glass. First aid kit.”

Glass hovered a moment. “...alright,” he said before hopping the counter to rifle through the drawer. The kit wasn’t hard to find; Rita had covered it Lisa Frank stickers and rhinestones. Glass unearthed it and dutifully handed it over to Juno, who popped it open with his good hand and started picking through it for antibiotic ointment and a butterfly bandage. There was also a half bottle of saline solution from the Claire’s ear piercing booth which Juno checked for an expiration date and then, shrugging, poured over his hand, leaving a pinkish puddle on the tile under him.

“Do you want help?” Glass asked, scooting back over the counter. “Also, is that an IV drip?”

“I’m good. And it’s best to be prepared around Rita,” Juno answered. How much saline solution should he use? Cecil probably kept his knives clean, right? He patted his hand dry on his coat and then started patting on the antibiotic cream.

“How does that not hurt?” Glass was bending over him now, peering down at the hand wound.

“Life is pain, Princess,” Juno mumbled, trying to get the butterfly bandage open with one hand and failing dramatically. Teeth it was, then.

“Oh, let me,” Glass said, intercepting the bandage before Juno could stick it in his mouth. He peeled back the wrapper with the ease of someone who currently had two good hands. “Palm up, please.”

Juno held out his hand and watched as Rex gently applies the bandage to it. When he was done, he slid his thumb back and forth gently over Juno’s palm to make sure the edges of the butterfly were smooth.

“Is that better?” Rex asked quietly.

“Uh-huh,” Juno replied because it was better than saying what he was thinking, which was _I can remember the last time someone touched me that softly._ He had a reputation to maintain as a grumpy, depressed mall cop, after all.

There was a pause where the two of them just... looked at each other. It felt like something out of a fucking rom-com, with Rex kneeling in front of his and still holding onto his hand.

"Here, take my coat," Rex said, shrugging out of it and throwing it over Juno's shoulders before he could protest. "Yours is... well, I'm not advocating for burning it, but only because of the environmental hazard."

It was swiftly becoming just a little too much, and Juno wanted desperately to end whatever was happening between him and Rex Glass before he did something stupid, like kiss him, so he did something even stupider.

“My mom,” he blurted out, voice cracking on the second word. Rex blinked in surprise. “You were curious about the… the second reason I quit the force. And what I said about my brother. I told you my mom never tried to kill me, but Ben, well, she… he...” Juno swallowed hard. The rose-tinted moment was gone, and in its place was something somehow worse. “They’re both gone now. Anyways, you had asked, and. Well. Thank you for the hand.”

“Oh, Juno,” Rex said in a tone of voice so soft and so sweet it would melt in the sun.

Juno jerked to his feet. “Well, whatever. If Cass told Cecil we were here, it was so she would have a distraction while she got the mask or whatever Croesus was keeping here back. Maybe she’s still there.” He started walking away before the other man could answer. Behind him, he could hear Rex hurry to catch up.

He shoved his hands in the pockets of Rex's jacket because he had to do something with them. His fingers brushed over what felt like several pens, half a sandwich (which, why), and the little bottle of white-out. The last one snagged on his mind, throwing itself into the miasma of "what the fuck is happening right now," a question to which Juno had a sinking suspicion he was getting closer to an answer he really didn't want. He sighed, the rose-tinted glow of the last minute fading back into reality. _Yup_ , he thought. _That's how it goes_.

***

What Juno wanted was to find an old friend, ask her why she’d lied to him and why she’s sicked her brother on him, and then maybe talk some sense into her.

It turned out Min Kanagawa had other plans.

Juno turned the corner to see Cass screaming red-faced at her stepmother, who was flanked by two police officers and had an angry red mark on her cheek.

“You stole it from me!” she shrieked. Juno was a little afraid she was going to give herself an aneurysm.

“Cass,” Min said, the picture of maternal concern, “you’re not well. Please, let’s go home for now.”

“Stop talking like I’m crazy! I’m fine!”

Min opened her mouth to respond, and then turned towards Juno and Rex. “Oh, Juno, you’re here. Good. Please, help me talk to her.”

“Juno, don’t you dare,” Cass snarled, glaring daggers at him.

Min sighed. “I’m so sorry to involve you in this, but she’s… well, she’s not herself. Look,” she said, gesturing to her cheek, “she attacked me when I got here. Honestly,” she dropped her voice to a whisper, “it’s gotten to the point where I’m scared of her.”

“Shut up!” Cass yelled. “Shut up, shut up, stop playing the victim and tell me where it is!”

“Where what is, Ms. Kanagawa?” Rex asked. “The thing she stole from you?”

“No! I mean, yes, but… ugh!” Cass shook her head. “I had a planned out schedule from when my documentary was supposed to start. Dad had written a note on it and I thought I dropped it when...”

“...when you broke in to trash the store,” Min said gently.

“You! I know you had something to do with this!” Cass closed in on Min, putting them almost nose to nose. One of the officers started forward until Mil held up a hand.

“Cassie,” Min said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Please, just come home with me.”

“I will when you tell me where the schedule is so I can shove it in you and Dad’s lying faces!”

“For the last time, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Min insisted.

“You’re a fucking liar, Min,” Cass snapped. “Juno, check her purse. I bet she still has it.”

“Cass, I can’t just—” Juno started.

“I can.” Rex stepped forward. “May I?”

“If this will help,” Min said wearily and handed over her bag.

It seemed like everyone held their breath while Rex rummaged. Or maybe it was just Juno.

“There’s no schedule in here,” Glass began hesitantly, “but...” he pulled an orange plastic pill bottle out to Juno. The drug wasn’t anything he could pronounce, much less identify, but he didn’t need to have a medical degree to see that it was made out to Cassandra Kanagawa.

“Antipsychotics,” Min supplied. “She’s been on them for the past eight months. Or, well, she’s supposed to have been. Croesus and I were concerned about her erratic behavior so we checked and, well, it doesn’t look like she’s been taking them.”

“This isn’t about my meds,” Cass insisted, but Juno could see the way the officers were looking at each other and she could too. The fight drained out of her like a punctured balloon.

“He promised, Juno,” she said, eyes big and voice small as one of the officers moved in. “He promised.”

Juno didn’t know what to say to that, so he didn’t say anything as the policemen led her and Min towards the exit. Tomorrow, the headlines would be laughing their asses off about a psychotic heiress who had trashed one of her father’s stores in retaliation for him not letting her be on TV and Juno? Juno had helped.

“I’m sorry, Juno, but you knew this was coming.” He could hear the regret in Rex’s voice and hated him, just a little for it. “I know you don’t want to think of her as a criminal mastermind but, well, if anyone was going to know how to break into one of the Kanagawas’ stores, it was going to be one of the Kanagawas.”

“She said… she wouldn’t have known how to get the doors open,” Juno told him, lips numb.

“And Cecil doesn’t know how to best shoot footage of a BDSM clown chasing down two people in an empty mall,” Rex replied softly. “But he knows where to find people who do. There’s a million things Ms. Kanagawa could have done, and we won’t know more until she’s settled down and the police have questioned her.”

“Yeah. Yeah, you’re right. Hey, Min! Wait a sec, I have something to ask you about.” Juno shouted the last part down the hall. The immaculate form of Min Kanagawa stopped and turned back towards him, gesturing for the officers towing Cass to keep going. Juno lowered his voice again. “Go wait in the Claire’s, I’ll be in in a minute to do the final write up for your report.”

“But—”

“Go,” Juno said again and started walking towards Min.

Juno hated to Min Kanagawa, always had, always would. He didn’t handle being condescended to particularly well and Min spent a nearly sarcastic amount on higher and higher heels so she could look further and further down on people. He normally came away with the desire to drink heavily, and those were the days he hadn’t put an old friend in whatever the clink was for people with money and an insanity plea.

“Juno, thank you so much for dealing with this,” Min said after the unfortunate process of ridding her hands of her stepdaughter. Her voice was full of the kind of sugary, wide-eyed sincerity that always seemed like a joke on someone else, and Juno had a sinking suspicion he knew who the someone else was. “When I asked that you be a part of this, I had no idea—”

“She was the one who found it, wasn’t she?” Juno asked, cutting her off.

Min blinked innocently. “What?”

“The mask. Cass was the one who found it, right? That was the deal, that was why she thought Croecus was letting her do her documentary series. You didn’t need me or the consultant or the police here to deal with Cass breaking in, we both know you’ve got people for that. You just needed witnesses that she wasn’t okay.”

Min smiled, condescension oozing from under her concerned facade. “Why, that’s quite the accusation. Why would I ever call the police if I was trying to hide something as serious as smuggling?”

“I’m guessing at least in part because then you can say things like that. And let’s not pretend we don’t both know Croesus has more cops on his payroll than not. Sure, the cops aren’t ideal, but it’s better than the scarier departments of the DOJ finding out. The longer this stays in Hyperion, the longer you get to decide what to do. And I’m guessing you need all the time you can get after Cass threw you that curveball.”

Min’s facade didn’t drop away completely—did it ever?—but she did settle into a detached, polite smile. “Mr. Steel, it seems we’ve had a bit of a misunderstanding. Cass has never so much as touched the mask, and while it’s certainly tragic that my beloved daughter has fallen from grace this way, she has to learn that her actions have consequences. We can’t all act like spoiled brats forever, can we?” She looked at Juno with the same level of affection a butcher gave to the meat he was weighing. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must go comfort my son. Twins have such a bond, you know. When one falls by the wayside, it’s always so tragic for the other, isn’t it?”

And then Min Kanagawa turned and walked out of the room like ruining lives was just a minor inconvenience that had gotten in the way of her after dinner plans. Juno knew there were fights you fought because you thought you had a chance and fights you fought because you were screwed but you could at least fuck up the other person’s day. Min Kanagawa wasn’t either of these. Min Kanagawa was the kind of person you fought against because she was the kind of awful that shouldn’t exist outside of fairy tales and then, when you’d worn yourself out completely, would brush you off like lint and then forget you ever existed because Min Kanagawa was, as far as Hyperion was concerned, invincible.

Juno bit the inside of his mouth until he tasted blood. Turning, he walked up to an officer who wasn’t currently escorting Cassandra to a cop car, asked a question, and then went to go tell Rex Glass he’d earned his reward.

***

“I am sorry it turned out this way, Juno,” Glass said as Juno was signing the last few dotted lines on his report. The son of a bitch even sounded like he meant it.

“That’s kinda the way it is in Hyperion City,” Juno replied, flipping through the papers to make sure he hadn’t missed anything and then set the papers on a sale table containing a ludicrous amount of sparkly unicorn stickers and nail polish with a fine layer of clear liquid hovering over the polish. “So, what are you doing after this?” He asked, less because he didn’t already know the answer and more because he wanted to see what Glass would say. “Like, in the long term.”

Glass’s eyes lit up. “Are you asking me to stick around, Officer?”

Juno shrugged. “Weirder things have happened in a Claire’s.”

“They have, haven’t they?” Glass said with a laugh that sounded as though it had been punched out of him, like maybe he hadn’t meant to let it out. “But I have a life out there, Juno, and as wonderful as this has been I don’t think I could give it all up. I’m a migratory creature. I don’t think I’ll ever settle down, to be honest with you.”

He took a step closer, a dark-eyed heartbreaker in the shitty, fluorescent lighting.

“But life can wait one night, Juno.”

And then he leaned in and kissed him. It was the kind of kiss the whole world stops for, the kind of kiss where you want to hurl yourself into it and never come out because once it’s done nothing else is ever going to measure up to it, except maybe leaning in for another one. So that’s just what Juno did.

And then it ended, because that’s what good things do.

“Rex...” Juno started, pulling back and watching Rex’s eyes flutter open, the dark pool of his pupils blown wide enough to drown in. He hesitated, just for a moment, then steeled his nerve. “Has anyone ever told you that you’re under arrest?”

The click of the metal bracelet locking around the other man’s wrist was nearly deafening in the quiet of the store.

The man who was probably not Rex Glass blinked. “Did you cuff me to a Claire’s earring rack?”

“Listen, it’s what was there,” Juno said defensively.

“I’ll admit,” Not-Rex said, tugging a bit on the cuffs to test them, “I usually get into this sort of thing closer to the end of the second date, not the first.”

“We haven’t been on a date.”

“Catching criminals doesn’t count?” Not-Rex asked sweetly, fluttering his eyelashes.

Juno’s heart made an irritating lurch that he chalked up to all the caffeine. “Not when the criminal’s you.”

Rex was the picture of surprise. It might have even been enough to throw Juno if they hadn’t still been close enough for Juno to feel his heartbeat, steady and sure.

“A criminal?” Rex asked. “Me? Juno, if you’re into this sort of play I don’t mind but do be kind enough to give me a few minutes to prepare.”

“I have a feeling playing a criminal comes pretty easily to you, considering”

“Ah, well. I suppose it was worth a shot. Although I do have a question, if I may.”

“Depends on the question.”

Juno watched as the man who called himself Rex Glass leaned back slightly on his heels and, ever so slightly, shifted into someone else. He still looked like Rex, but his eyes were sharper, his smile just a bit more plastic.

“What gave me away?” the man asked.

Juno hesitated for a moment, then answered. “A couple things. First, I guess, is that mall cops aren’t officers of the peace. We’re security officers. That was a little weird for someone with your credentials not to know but not the biggest red flag I’ve ever seen. It was finding the whiteout in your pocket that tipped me off the most, actually, along with insisting you open the door for me. And then, of course, there’s the fact you just stole my keys and my wallet, both of which I would like back.”

(And, of course, there biggest and reddest flag of the whole group, the one that Glass kept tossing around like he was trying out for the color guard: no one just saw Juno and felt about him the way Rex said he did. No one looked at the colossal fuckup that he had turned himself into and said “that’s it, that’s the one I want.” Especially not pretty, willowy men with sharp eyes and fox-clever mouths.

So, yeah. It wasn’t exactly the toughest whodunnit Juno’d ever been up against.)

“Whiteout?” Glass asked, the picture of surprise. “That’s what this hinges on? Why, Juno, what sinister things could I be doing with _whiteout_?”

“Well,” Juno answered, perhaps a bit more drily than strictly necessary, “I assume covering the door’s sensors so the mag locks wouldn’t automatically engage, considering what a big deal you made about opening all the doors. Did you think I, what, wouldn’t notice that the sensor didn’t light up when you swiped my card if you were flirting? Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think you did it last night as a way to make sure you could get back out. RFID badges aren’t exactly the hardest thing in the world to copy, but if an alarm got tripped you were looking at being locked into the last place you’d ever want to be. That’s how Cass got in, isn’t it? She didn’t have card access but the doors were already open. And that’s why you were so quick to dismiss her story. You wouldn’t have to be alone for long to slip in and grab the mask, not with everything already unlocked for you, but that only worked if I trusted you enough to let you wander off. Which has happened exactly once tonight, and that’s when I was talking to Min.” There was a brief heavy silence, and then Juno sighed. “Rex. Answer me this. If I were to go through your pockets right now, would I find that fucking mask?”

Rex’s lips curved up into a smug smile.

“Well, well. Look at you,” he practically purred. “I can see why everyone thinks you’re too smart for your own good. You’re certainly too smart to be stuck working here.”

Juno eyed him warily. “I think it’s more that the smarts are fine and I’m too much of a stubborn jackass for my own good.”

“Either way, you’re wasted here,” Rex said, leaning forward. It was the slightest of shifts, but Juno hadn’t had the presence of mind to step back and the movement put them nose to nose again. A few glossy, dark strands of Rex’s hair, disheveled from the events of the night, fell into his face. Juno refused to be endeared but good Lord was it an uphill battle. “Come with me, Juno.”

There are moments in your life when time seems to stand absolutely still, forcing you to stay frozen in this one unending moment. Juno’d had a couple, like when he finally got the bedroom door in Sarah’s apartment open, or when he realized no one was there to meet him at the end of the aisle. A beautiful thief asking him to run away with him definitely counted as a third. But moments always end, and Juno finally found his voice.

“What?” he croaked.

“Come with me,” Rex urged again. “We’re too big for this town, darling, and there’s so much more of the world for us to find. I can show it all to you.”

Juno could feel the words, a buzz against his skin, and the worst part of it, of all of it, was how badly he wanted to say yes. It was an exhilarating, terrifying thought, that he could just act like he was a 20-year-old idiot with a mohawk and a fake ID again and run away with a pretty stranger. But…

“Juno,” Rex breathed out, filling the silence. “We could be spectacular together.”

...but, Juno had always been better at being left behind than he had been at leaving.

“Rex,” Juno said, so many emotions churning in him that he didn’t have the space left to be mortified when his voice cracked. “Rex, I told the cops to call for backup five minutes ago.”

As if on cue, the sound of heavy footsteps echoed faintly down the hall.

Juno was expecting that soft, sweet look on Rex’s face to drop away, a useless mask in the face of his impending arrest. Instead, something in his eyes got just a little softer.

“Do you have your notebook on you?” he asked.

Which was not exactly what Juno thought he would ask next. “I mean, yeah? Yes, I have it.”

“May I?” Rex asked, holding out his free hand until Juno put his notepad and pen into it. “I would like to ask that you wait until I’m gone to read this. Terribly awkward otherwise, you know.”

“It’s not like I can’t come ask you about it if I have any questions,” Juno said as he watched Rex scribble out a short note. “Visitations and whatnot.”

Rex let out a short laugh. “Staying in one place for too long really isn’t my cup of tea, darling, especially when that place is a jail cell. No, I’ll be out sooner than not.” He reached out and tucked the paper back into Juno’s pocket. “Goodbye, Juno. I realize how this sounds, considering how tonight went, but I really do hope to see you again.”

Juno didn’t actually have a witty retort for that, which was just as well since two HCPD officers burst in. It was a tad dramatic in his opinion, especially considering all the work had already been done.

“Steel,” sneered one of the officers. Juno couldn’t remember his name for the life of him but could swear he had a vague memory of him as a rookie weeping in the men’s room after getting a write up for mislabeling evidence. “Nice work. For you, anyway.”

Somehow, Juno didn’t have it left in him to get angry with the little shit. His mouth felt like a wound, raw and bruised, and he’d used all his fight for the day resisting the urge to be the most broken thing a man whose name wasn’t Rex Glass ever stole from a Claire’s during fall clearance. Instead, he settled on feeling old and tired.

“I’m going to go get some shut-eye,” he told the officers as they detached Rex from the earring post. “Have someone call me if I need to go in and give a statement.”

It wasn’t exactly protocol to go home right after solving one crime and stopping another, but hey. He wasn’t exactly on the force anymore. So he walked back to his shitty apartment and threw his coat onto his shitty table and pulled his shitty vodka out of his shitty freezer. He took a sip to brace himself, shaking like a wet dog as it went down, and then reached into his pocket for the note.

He wasn’t sure what he was expecting, but it sure wasn’t whatever he got. But hey, at least he was right about Rex Glass being the fakest of all fake names.

The next morning, Juno woke up to three missed called from Sasha and one text that began with “I shouldn’t be telling you this, but” and ended with the information that the man maybe named Peter Nureyev had disappeared from holding before Dark Matters could pick him up and, coincidentally, the mask had disappeared from its evidence locker. Juno read the message over three times, sighed, and took another hit of his bottle of Dark Eyes. Then, like most mornings, he put on his uniform and headed in to work and forced himself not to think about how he could, ever so faintly, still smell Nureyev’s cologne because what was the use? He was a little too old and a little too mean, a little too used to the stick and not the carrot, to fall head over heels for the first pretty face with a sharp smile and midnight eyes that came his way. But he’d thought about it--about what it would be like to lean in just a little and be raw and open just for a night. _At least,_ Juno thought. _At least I didn’t go to bed with him. At least I didn’t love him. At least I did the right thing. At least I learned my lessons well._

He kept dragging himself to work, because what else did he have to do? Nobody asked him if he was okay to his face, except Mick, who continued to be Mick with aplomb. He knew what they were all thinking but… it’s fine. The next week, someone would drop bathbombs in the fountain and everyone would forget that Juno Steel almost let himself get heartbroken over a man with no name. It was fine. He was fine. Everything was fine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hit that mfing next chapter button for the goofy add on because i forgot this was a fucking paul blart cinematic universe au while i was writing it and got hella angsty!


	2. Chapter 2

Thursday, he gets a text from his boss saying that he and Alessandra need to be at work fifteen minutes early the next day because they finally replaced the manager at Claire’s and wanted to give the new one a brief rundown on how the stores got open, which was also fine. Actually, it was better than fine. Juno wasn’t sure how long it took to replace one lousy manager who stole a grand total of a hundred and fifty eighty bucks and change, but Claire’s sure seemed to be dragging their feet.

Alessandra brought him a coffee, which was the closest she’d actually gotten to voicing her concern.

“You know anything about this schmuck?” Juno asks, taking a sip as they waited outside the locked up Claire’s for the security lead and the new manager.

Alessandra shakes her head. “Not a thing. I wasn’t actually privy to the hiring process. What do you think they’ll be like?”

“A peppy asshole or a creepy neckbeard, historically speaking,” Juno replied. “Thanks, by the way.” He gestured slightly with his coffee.

“Any time, Steel,” she said. “And as long as I don’t have to deal with an outbreak of dick tetanus I don’t actually care that much about the manager, I guess.”

“Don’t jinx it, Strong, or it’ll end up being one of the Jesus Moms.”

Alessandra choked on her coffee. Between her slapping Juno on the shoulder, and Juno giving her shit about it, they didn’t realize they weren’t alone until someone coughed politely to their right.

“Y’all done?” the lead security guard asked, clearly unimpressed. Not that Juno was paying any attention.

The man—the new manager—next to him was, in a word, manicured. He was tall and rail-thin, his dark brown hair still holding that faint freshly-dyed sheen to it, cut close on the sides and just long enough on the top to curl slightly. He had those semi-hipster half-frame glasses that sparkled a dramatic gold in the low light of the nearly abandoned mall. His mouth had some kind of bubblegum pink gloss on it and a slight curve that looked like trouble.  


He winked. Juno was vaguely aware he had crushed the coffee cup in his hand and had boiling liquid draining between his fingers.

“Anyways,” said Juno’s ever oblivious boss, “this is Duke Rose, our new Claire’s manager. You’re going to be running him through how you typically open stores in the morning so he knows what to expect when he gets here. Any questions?”

“Not from me,” The Snake In Eden Who Currently Referred To Himself As Duke Rose said. “Any on your end, officers?”

Juno lunged.

***

“Oh my god.”

  
“This… isn’t what it looks like?”

  
“Why, hello Ms. Strong. And may I offer my congratulations?”

  
“Oh. My god.”

  
“I’m. I mean. Nureyev, get your hand out of my pants.”

  
“Oh my God.”

  
“So you’ve said. Juno, I could have sworn you said you were the only one on shift for the food court area until three.”

  
“I got called over because Jesus Mom Karen No. 2 called in to say she sensed blasphemous energies coming from the men’s room and we couldn’t reach you. Oh my God!”

  
“See, I don’t think the Jesus Moms would appreciate you taking the Lord’s name in vain like that.”

  
“Juno Steel, you are making out with a known criminal! In the food court bathrooms! You are becoming a Mall Teen!”

  
“…That was a Rita amount of exclamation points. And hey, no I’m not. We’re doing this for the irony. That is, if we were doing what it looked like we were doing, which we aren’t.”

  
“Yes, and also I’m significantly better dressed than Mall Teens.”

  
“Oh my God.”

  
“…don’t tell Rita?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *noir voice* but the truth—the buried, unwanted truth at the very core of his being—was that juno steel didn’t eat mall hot dogs because he wanted ironic food poisoning. he ate them because he liked them, greasy aftertaste and all, and consistently forgot how bad the indigestion had been last time until he felt himself succumbing to it once more. and then he swore off hot dogs forever, promising himself next time he would be different. that next time he would get a chipotle salad bowl. but in his traitorous, wretched heart, juno knew what he was and what he would always be: a hot dog boy. there was no escape, because while nothing could hurt him the way three and a half ounces of barely cooked mystery meat in a tube could, nothing else in his life ever made him quite so happy as the carb-ridden lunch paired with the thrill of knowing he was doing something he would soon regret but didn’t have to face up to quite yet.
> 
> being in love with peter nureyev felt a lot like eating a mall hot dog.
> 
> so yeah
> 
> thank you again to atlas for the beautiful art, you are the regional manager to the claire's of my heart. 
> 
> also thank you to anyone who reads this, because that means you got thru the whole dang thing! idk why you would do that to yourself but i appreciates it.


End file.
